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The Road to Tyranny

While most Americans refuse to see it; the sorry truth is we don't live in a very free country. Furthermore, we are becoming less free every day. Our elections are rigged, our phones are tapped without warrant, we can be secretly arrested and held indefinitely without bail or legal representation, and now we are in very real danger of being labeled as terrorists if we so much as complain about the situation.

This sort of legislation constitutes barreling down the fast lane on the road to tyranny. It's a road America has been on for a long time, but we've been moving increasingly faster since WWII. Unfortunately, the road leads to a cliff and passage of this legislation will leave us, like Wile E. Coyote, momentarily suspended in disbelief before we, and our supposedly cherished freedoms, go crashing into a tiny puff of smoke on the valley floor below. Unlike the cartoon character however, we and our freedoms won't miraculously bounce back to chase the roadrunner again.

"Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy."
George F. Kennan, 1987. Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study and former US Ambassador to the Soviet Union.

Beyond that, the analogy is defective. We haven't really been chasing anything, such as the American Dream, down that road. No, we're the ones being herded, and increasingly stampeded down that road in fear of what H. L. Mencken referred to as "an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." For four decades the communists were our hobgoblins and nuclear missiles were their pitchforks.

Today the hobgoblins are the "jihadists" or, more generically, the "terrorists" that the military-industrial rustlers use to drive us in fear toward the cliff. And, once again, nuclear weapons are supposed to be their pitchforks. Heck, according to Sibel Edmonds the rustlers have been selling them the weapon designs.

While fear has been the primary force driving Americans down the road to tyranny, it's the other primal emotion that motivates the rustlers - greed. You see, protecting us from those hobgoblins, real or imagined, is a very lucrative endeavor. It's been worth about a $Trillion so far for the Iraq war alone. That's with a capital "T" bubba, and all of it borrowed from your grandchildren. In short, it's worth a lot of money, prestige, and power to a lot of people - mostly in high places. In fact, it's worth a whole lot more to them than your money, your freedom, and even your life as far as they're concerned.

But wait, there's still more!

Besides being consumed by greed, the rustlers are now being struck with fear as well. This is what accounts for the acceleration of their drive down the road to tyranny, as exemplified by such abominations as H.R. 1955/S.B 1959. It isn't the fear of communists, terrorists, or bombs though. It's the rustlers' innate fear of tall trees sporting short ropes.

The truth is, indeed, out there; and they can't classify, delete, pardon, or commute enough to stop it from becoming widely known. So now they mean to outlaw the truth outright by imprisoning and no doubt torturing those who dare speak it. All the better to terrorize, and thereby deter others who might. That is the purpose of The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorist Prevention Act of 2007. It's no more about preventing homegrown terrorism than The USA PATRIOT Act is about patriotism.

Generation gap?

As they say, demographics is destiny. The generations who faithfully and unquestioningly accepted the propaganda churned out continuously by the lamestream media are today either dead or dying. Young people today are hardly even aware of it beyond perhaps American Idol or Lost. They may look to it for entertainment, but they certainly don't look to it for truth. The rest of us who reside somewhere in between have either recognized the propaganda networks for what they are, or we're in the process of doing so. That's what's got the rustlers' panties in a wad.

It's also why Mark Weitzman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center falsely characterizedArchitects and Engineers for 911 Truth as a hotbed of homegrown terrorism before a congressional committee. He knows that if the truth about what really happened on September 11, 2001 becomes widely known then the Military-Industrial Complex will collapse into its own footprint and any survivors will be hunted down and lynched - regardless of their nationality.

It's the search for the truth - truth that is completely lacking in the lamestream media - that has led many people to the internet and sites such as www.ae911truth.org and countless others. To be sure, the internet has more than its share of misinformation, disinformation, inanity, schlock, and idiots; kind of like life in general. But, unlike the lamestream media, it hasn't had all the pertinent truth blatantly filtered out of it. Indeed, within it resides a large number of individuals and organizations dedicated to ferreting out and disseminating the truth about virtually everything - including the rustlers!

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister

Unfortunately, our society is dominated by people for whom truth is the enemy because the truth is that they've committed terrible crimes. Whether it is the 935 documented lies the Bush Administration told about Iraq's WMD capabilities and ties to Al-Qaeda, or the media collusion in suppressing Ron Paul's Presidential campaign; it is evident that their greatest enemy is the truth. And the internet truth-seekers are therefore their greatest threat. Hence the current effort to criminalize the truth.

The choice is now clear

The truth is that the Bush Administration's War on Iraq was planned long before 9-11. The proven lies about Iraq and Iran call into question everything ever said and done by the Bush Administration and propagated by the lamestream media; which merely functions as the administration's de facto propaganda ministry. Collectively, they and a few other institutions comprise the State referred to in the Goebbels quote above and dedicated to the lie.

On the other hand, the truth-seekers of the internet blogosphere comprise the People referred to in the phrase "We the People" in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution and dedicated to the truth. This dichotomy is, always has been, and always will be the essential conflict in society. Other dichotomies (i.e., rich/poor, black/white, citizen/illegal alien) are merely wedges employed by the State to divide and conquer the People.

Turn, turn, turn

Sooner or later, such tyranny always breeds revolution. The world is currently undergoing the most profound revolution since Gutenberg's printing press removed the Church's monopoly on The Bible. That revolution produced the transition from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance, and ultimately, to the American Revolution and the concept of civil rights.

Today the internet has broken the lamestream media's monopoly on news and information. Further, the blogosphere is increasingly doing the job of unearthing and disseminating the truth about the lies that have been propagated by the lamestream media. Unlike the Church however, the power structure of today is well aware of the significance of this new media marvel and they are desperate to maintain their control of the masses. They can't survive without the mass media programming (that is, programming the minds of the masses) that they've invested so much to perfect.

There's no stopping the revolution that is taking place, but that won't keep the rustlers from making draconian, even violent attempts to do so. We'll either be driven over that cliff at the end of the road to tyranny, or we'll turn around and start back in the direction of freedom - hopefully trampling on the rustlers in the process.

I believe you incorrectly attributed to Joseph Goebbels the following:

**QQ**If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.**QQ**
Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister

I am quite certain that Goebbels NEVER made any such statement. If he had, I am sure that Hitler and many others would have accused him, rightly, of plagiarism because it was Hitler who had written something very close to that in Mein Kampf, Chapter X, Part ! (page 134 of the James Murphy translation).

The passage from Hitler is the most often quoted passage from Mein Kampf. It is too long for me to give here--but it is easy enough to find if you have a copy of Mein Kampf. Rather than endorsing the telling of big lies, Hitler denounces such abuse of the **QQ**primitive simplicity**QQ** of the broad masses. In the next paragraph Hitler condemns the Jews for having **QQ**known better than any others how falsehoood and calumny can be exploited**QQ** and as masters of lies. In other words, Hitler saw Jews as masters of the Big Lie and condemned them for it.